Here’s a link to a slideshow on my personal blog of some photos that I took from the CLM Workshop last week:

https://tradologist.wordpress.com/2012/06/27/clm-workshop-recap/

Enjoy!

Jeff Gicklhorn

BLM Needles Field Office

1) When I put cheese on my sandwich and spend the day in the field, the cheese is perfectly melted by lunchtime.

2) This is one of the least disturbed regions of the U.S. My job of monitoring wilderness characteristics has trained me to distinguish between natural and cultural influences on the landscape. While there is evidence of failed ranching and mining endeavors scattered among current infrastructure for resource (electricity, gas, and water) transport to cities, this landscape is huge. Solar projects and other developments seriously impact treasured species, but the landscape has survived in many places. I have climbed mountains, scanned over 30 miles in multiple directions, and not been able to detect a single human deed.

I shudder to think what life would be like here, with no air conditioned truck to take me back to an air conditioned office and house. I marvel that it has been done for generations.

Four weeks ago I repacked the entire contents of my college room and made the 6-hour drive to Lakeview, Oregon. Although I was thrilled to be moving back to the colorful desert after a 4-year hiatus in rainy western Washington, my untrained eyes saw only sagebrush and cheat grass on the roadside as I sang along to oldies in the car. After one intense week of fieldwork with the three other range interns, the familiar landscape along the highway suddenly transformed before my eyes. After altering my search pattern, I not only spied the rabbitbrushes and bunchgrasses mixed in with the sagebrush I know and love, but I found myself subconsciously keeping a running tally of family names and species in my head.

That classic issue that many biology students know intimately – that of having their uninhibited enthusiasm about the natural world met with bored and blank stares – has not been an issue here. Everyone around me is so excited about working for the CLM. We talk about plants and sage grouse during work, after going home, and even on weekend hikes and camping trips. We would probably talk about them before work too, if we conversed at all through our 6:00 am stupor.

Most importantly, my reservations about living in a middle-of-nowhere town have been assuaged. However, the locals have been as friendly as can be and the accessibility to nature more than makes up for the lack of conveniences and abundance of conservative values. I don’t envy my college friends striking out to New York City or Los Angeles, as far from the natural world as a person can get. A couple of weeks here have awarded me with spectacular views of antelope, wild horses, jackrabbits, sandhill cranes and pelicans, as well as fresh bear tracks, bobcat scat, geysers, astoundingly gigantic stars, and a triple rainbow. These combined with the desert colors and constant sunshine keep me energized about going to work each day.

-Anna Moeller

Castilleja and rock formations in the Lakeview District

Work has continued at the Cosumnes River Preserve.  The last few weeks have been spent doing some serious weed control.  Mowing, spraying, and pulling have taken up the majority of my work hours.  Target species we are dealing with include Cocklebur, Fennel, Star thistle, Italian thistle, Milk thistle, and Bristly ox tongue.

The CLM conference in Chicago has been underway this past week. It has been a great experience.  I have had the pleasure of meeting many interns in my area and the surrounding states.  I have learned a great deal about where others are working and what they are doing.  I have had a great time learning new field techniques and uniting with the rest of the CLM family.  It was nice to meet so many other interns with similar interests and finally put faces with the names I have been working with via phone and email at the Chicago Botanic Garden.  The gardens are amazing; what a wonderful setting for a conference.

Hello,

I have been incredibly busy the past few weeks monitoring past burns within the Carson City BLM District. We have been learning great techniques for monitoring. We have also participated in some outreach events, where we did some rare plant monitoring with a local plant society. Overall I have been quite busy, but enjoying every minute of it.

-Austin

The last few weeks have been a blur, consumed by our new favorite activity – sage grouse nest site monitoring.  Sage grouse is the big buzz word around here as the local subspecies may be put on the threatened or endangered list soon. So besides counting males this spring, the Bishop field office put radio collars on a few birds, and as been tracking them as they nest.  Now that the females have left their nests, team Botany gets to get off the bench and get into the thick of it – by monitoring the vegetation around the nests.

All I can tell you is that sage grouse like to nest  in some pretty remote areas. That we have to hike to. With all of our equipment.

An example of sage grouse nesting spots

Its a great way to see some of the most beautiful mountain views, away from everything 🙂

It’s been four weeks since I left Chicago for Buffalo. The experiences I have had in these first few weeks have been a bit overwhelming. Once I overcame the initial culture shock, I found that Buffalo wasn’t at all the boring small town I thought it would be. While definitely small, both the town and the field office are full of some of the most fun-loving and kind-hearted people I have ever met. The people of Buffalo know the value of the land that they live on and take full advantage of it. Hiking in the Big Horns, camping in Middle Fork Canyon, running on the creek-side trail that runs through town or fishing out of it are only a few joys found around Buffalo. I can’t forget to mention the bluegrass Thursdays and weekends at the local BBQ joint. I have the pleasure of living with enthusiastic, career oriented, young people like myself, from whom I have much to learn.

I had never really heard of the BLM before coming to Buffalo. Coming from the flat, enclosed, and busy environment of Chicago, I could not have understood the scope and value of the land and the kind of work that the BLM does. At work I am surrounded by people who truly dedicate themselves to serving and protecting public land. I has been amazing for me to see how all these disciplines (biology, geology, archaeology, natural resources, etc.) are involved in managing land.

My particular task is to assemble a Visual Resources Inventory (VRI) for the Newcastle field office. As a biologist, I never even thought about how difficult it would be to mitigate all the visual impacts of the developments that we employ on BLM lands, not just oil fields and transmission lines, but solar and wind farms as well. In order to mitigate visual impacts on the BLM lands, an inventory of the visual values of the lands is needed. A VRI is a method of quantifying the visual values of landscapes.  The Visual Resources Inventory is used to establish Visual Resource Management classes, which are then used in the writing of resources management plans. The biologist in me hopes that there is much more planning involved in developing projects to protect the landscape that only taking visuals into account, and there definitely is. However, after attending a week-long course of Visual Resource Management, I see the necessity for taking visuals into account.

That is about it for my first month. I have been training, working with kids, getting used to living in a big house with five other BLM-ers, and more training. I have at least four more months to learn, work, and enjoy; but I am sure they will pass very quickly. Here are a few pictures of what I have seen this first month. More to come next month!

Right before my situational awareness training

Just a casual drive through on our first weekend in Buffalo

I need batteries for my SLR

Hello,

This is my first blog ever- how exciting! I’ve been working for the BLM in Lakeview, Oregon for a few weeks now doing rangeland monitoring. Everything is new and exciting. New town, new friends, new environment, new job and new plants. I drive a sweet truck on rocky roads looking for a post in the middle of know where. We use four different maps and a picture to help us get there (not a GPS). Sometimes the stakes are fallen, buried or do not exist anymore. I find this to be a really fun scavenger hunt. At the sites we collect data and photos to continue monitoring the site. It has been a really neat experience and a unique way to get to know a new part of the country. I would say that it has strengthen my navigation skills and my grass identification skills the most so far.

I am currently in Chicago for the CLM workshop. It has been great fun meeting other folks who are enthusiastic about botany and field work. The BLM speakers have been very encouraging and interesting. I am so grateful to have been given this opportunity and am happy to be living in my element. Yay plants!

Last week here in Carson City we began our long but satisfying days of fire monitoring. It was fun to learn the protocol and take quantitative data. The extensive procedure helps in forming a complete picture of fire recovery success (or failure!). It will be interesting to see the recovery status of the many fires we will be monitoring this year and I hope to gain a better understanding of fire restoration in Nevada. I’m confident our team will become a well-oiled machine in monitoring fire transects; I take it as a sign I’ve been focusing well on my job that at the end of the day, when I close my eyes, I see little Poa secunda patches just waiting to be counted.

-Allison in Carson City

It may be getting hot (kinda like standing in front of 500 blow dryers), but I still would not trade this experience for anything. The amazing people I have had the privilege of working with, the opportunities I have received, and the friends I have made along the way have all be nothing short of spectacular.

Working with the Springs Preserve has been amazing I get to work with the public  in a beautiful garden, which I can now say I am a part of, is a wonderful way to spend my Sundays at work. I get to work with children and discusses different botany topics, it is really rewarding when you get to see them get really involved and interested in the lessons. Working in the plant propagation facility is a great way for Allison and I to work with volunteers and manage watering schedule, planting projects, and catalog the species in the facility.

Still the field work is the most rewarding experience. The fact that I have seen more of the Mojave Desert in the four month I have been in Vegas, than most of the people whom have lived in the city for 20 years really makes me proud of the work I am doing. The opportunity to explore the different areas, from creosote to pinyons,  and brush up on my keying skills is wonderful. I would never trade this experience for anything, I am just amazed I am only doing this for another month.

And I got to backpack the Grand Canyon south rim to the Colorado River this week end, so thats cool too.

Dan Goldbacher